Short Story Unit #2

“The Gift of the Magi”“The Necklace”

“The Sniper”“The Cask of Amontillado

“The Paperhanger”

Periods in Literature

• There are specific characteristics in written pieces that take shape due to the time period in which they were written.

• These periods have been given names, depending on what ideas and philosophy was shaping the world at the time they were written.

Ancient

• ?-476

• Characteristics: epic struggles, religion, quests, tragic heroes, interaction between men and gods, morality

• Famous Authors: Sophocles, Homer, (Greek/Roman mythology) (The Bible)

Medieval

500-1500

Characteristics: religious overtones, courtly love (non-sexual), knights, chivalry, blend between fantasy and reality

Famous Authors: Beowulf, Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), Dante (Dante’s Inferno)

Renaissance (England)

• 1500-1670

• Characteristics: idealism of classical civilizations (Greek/Roman), humanism (feelings/emotions), focus on protagonist-to tell story

• Famous Authors: Milton (Paradise Lost), William Shakespeare

Enlightenment

• 1700-1800

• Characteristics: intellectual, philosophical, cultural and social movement, scientific

• Famous Authors: Ben Franklin

Romantic Period

• 1798-1870

• Characteristics: Shift from reason to senses, feelings, and imagination. Shift from urban focus to rural and natural. Focus on individual intuition, imagination and emotions. Rebellious against oppression

• Famous Authors: Shelley (Frankenstein), Jane Austen

Victorian

• 1837-1901

• Characteristics: Pure romance to realism, reflects daily life and practical problems, hardships of working class (industrialism), moral purpose, age of doubt/pessimist

• Famous Authors: Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stroker

Transcendental

• 1830-1860

• Characteristics: the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.

• Famous Authors: Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Thoreau

Realism

• 1820-1920

• Characteristics: contains aspects of Victorian, but focuses on plight of individuals, breakdown of traditional values, regional locations, urban poor, focus on characters more than plot, realities of life

• Famous Authors: Twain, Sinclair

Naturalism• 1870-1920

• Characteristics: used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character, influenced by Darwinism, Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, and filth

• Famous Authors: Jack London, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Edith Wharton

Existentialism

• 1850-today

• Characteristics: concerned with the concept of human existence. Everything is centered around the individual’s experience on earth and the limits one must endure for being human. Existentialists believe the human condition leaves us fully free to make our own decisions (with no guidance) and therefore completely responsible for their repercussions.

• Famous Authors: Camus, Kafka

Modernism

• 1910-1965

• Characteristics: new technology combined with horrors of WW I and II made people question the future of humanity, focus on inner self. People felt alienated, worried about the decline in civilization

• Famous Authors: Steinbeck, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Sam Beckett

Post Modernism

• 1965-today

• Characteristics: combination of elements from previous genres, uses humor, irony and dark comedy, novels that fictionalize actual historical events and characters

• Famous Authors

Gothic Literature• Gothic fiction, is a genre or mode of literature that combines

fiction, horror and Romanticism. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. It originated in England in the second half of the 18th century and had much success in the 19th as witnessed by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, is Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

• The name Gothic refers to the (pseudo)-medieval buildings in which many of these stories take place. This extreme form of romanticism was very popular in England and Germany.

Southern Gothic

• Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South.

• Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may or may not dabble in voodoo, ambivalent gender roles and decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or coming from poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence.

Class Literature

• To Kill A Mockingbird: Post modernism, elements of Southern Gothic

• Anthem: Modernism, Distopian• The Most Dangerous Game: Postmodernism• The Monkey’s Paw: Romantic• Sunday in the Park: Postmodernism• The Rocking Horse Winner: Modernism

Class Literature Cont.

• The Gift of the Magi: Realism/Romanticism• The Necklace: Realism/Victorian• The Sniper: Modernism• The Cask of Amontillado: Romantic, Gothic• The Paperhanger: Postmodernism, Southern

Gothic

Class Literature Cont.

• Fahrenheit 451: Modernism/Distopian• The Odyssey: Ancient • The Jungle: Realism• Shakespeare: Renaissance